‘Green Porno’ Shows Bugs in a New Light

If I was a porno, I would be green.

Have you seen this? Isabella Rossellini, dressed as a bug, describing and reenacting the lives and sexual habits of insects. Sounds gross, dirty, and indecent, but somehow, it’s very endearing.

The collection of shorts includes Rossellini adorning a variety of insect outfits, from masochistic snails to unfortunate male honeybees to very sneaky spiders. While the show is designed for educational purposes, it is most definitely adult. I caught it around 12:30 am on the Sundance Channel, which originally commissioned the series of shorts. The script does not beat around the bush, describing these often reviled critter’s sex lives without euphemism, and often with a slight adult sense of humor. But at the same time Rossellini is able to create something eye-catching, informative, and incredibly interesting.

Perhaps is it is simplicity, the treatment of sex as something completely natural and unshameful, that is refreshing. After all, all creatures much reproduce. There is a maturity to the films largely unseen today in the treatment of sex, and more often than not the act of reproduction for these creatures is something devoid of pleasure, but still intrinsic to survival (see: spiders). We begin to question what forces make us act in reproduction. If it not pleasure, is it simply our natural drive?

There is another element to the series, that of appreciation. Insects are pests in modern society, sparking the development of and increased use of pesticides and insect termination companies. Even the eco-friendly find bugs to be a nuisance, although less detrimental methods are used to repel them. But we must remember that insects play a vital role in the food chain, realized more and more in recent years with epidemics like Colony Collapse Disorder. We are a co-dependant world, and Rossellini’s shorts bring understanding to this relationship, by showing insects in a humorous and informative way.

And the shorts are humorous, with Rossellini’s comical (yet anatomically correct) outfits and short quips. The wealth of bold colors and simple outfits are styled for informational focus and lend a child-like quality to the show. In the end, I found myself hoping for another episode. I can easily see the collection becoming a regular series for Sundance’s green lineup, but for now I’ll settle for this one set of humorous, mesmerizing, and informational films.

AceFisch | My Bio & Articles

I am an junior English major/ Philosophy minor at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. Currently I am spending the spring of 2009 studying at the University College Cork in Cork, Ireland.